John Amos Comenius - Legacy

Legacy

The Comenius Medal, a UNESCO award honouring outstanding achievements in the fields of education research and innovation, commemorates Comenius. Peter Drucker hailed Comenius as the inventor of textbooks and primers.

Comenius, his life and teachings, have become better known since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Czech Republic and Slovakia

During the 19th century Czech National Revival, Czechs idealised Comenius as a symbol of the Czech nation. This image persists to the present day. In 1919 Comenius University was founded by act of parliament in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, (now in Slovakia). It was the first university with courses in the Slovak language. Slovakia and the Czech Republic celebrate 28 March, the birthday of Comenius, as Teachers' Day. University of Jan Amos Komensky has been founded in Prague. It offers bachelor's, master's and graduate degree programmes.

Gate to Languages, a project of lifelong education, taking place in the Czech Republic from October 2005 to June 2007 and aimed at language education of teachers, was named after his book Janua linguarum reserata (Gate to Languages Unlocked).

Other European

In Sárospatak, Hungary, a teacher's college is named after him (the college now belongs to the University of Miskolc.)

A primary school in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia is named after Comenius (Jan Amos Komenski in Macedonian). The Czechoslovak government built the school after the catastrophic earthquake in 1963 that levelled most of the city.

The Comenius Foundation is a non-governmental organisation in Poland, dedicated to the provision of equal opportunities to children under 10 years of age.

The Italian film director Roberto Rossellini took Comenius, and especially his theory of "direct vision," as his model in the development of his didactic theories, which Rossellini hoped would usher the world into a utopian future.

"Comenius", a European Union school partnership program, takes its name from the teacher of nations.

In the United Kingdom, the University of Sheffield's Western Bank Library holds the largest collection of Comenius manuscripts outside of the Czech Republic.

USA

In 1892 Comenius Hall, the principal classroom and faculty office building on Moravian College's campus in Pennsylvania, was built. In 1892 educators in many places celebrated the three-hundredth anniversary of Comenius, and at that time the Comenian Society for the study and publication of his works was formed.

The education department at Salem College in North Carolina has an annual Comenius Symposium dedicated in his honor; the subjects usually deal with modern issues in education.

The Comenius Foundation in the US, a non-profit 501(c)(3) charity, uses film and documentary production to further faith, learning, and love.